


in the land of the living

by hitlikehammers



Series: The Anti-Geode League (or: Bucky Barnes and His Gourmet Glazed Ham) [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Can Still Glaze One Hell of a Christmas Ham, Episode 2.10 Spoilers, Episode Fix-it, Episode: s02e10 What They Become, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Gen, I am SO Glad We Had That Talk, M/M, Okay? Okay great, Protecting Their Own, This Fic is Decidedly Not Concerned with Canonical Plausibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2757935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trip remembers the Temple; the Chamber. Remembers the Obelisk. Remembers—</p><p>Well. Basically, Trip remembers more than enough to be real skeptical about how the hell he ended up <i>here</i>, after <i>that</i>.</p><p> </p><p>Fix-It for Episode 2.10: <i>What They Become.</i> For obvious reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the land of the living

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weepingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/gifts).



> If I was a bit _upset_ about certain events in AoS 2.10, then I knew damn well [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/) was going to be _very upset_ , indeed. Which meant a fix-it was needed. And she advised me to share it with whoever else needed it, as well, so: here is the fix it! No, I am not at all concerned about how this does or doesn't work with regard to canon or logic. Yes, I am entirely concerned about giving Antoine Triplett the non-ending he deserves.

The last thing he remembers, after the shard hits his chest, after he recognizes the tingling in his veins for what it is, for what it means as it spreads, after he watches the calcification of his skin and feels it deeper, brittling his bones; the last thing he remembers before the world goes dark and he exits stage fucking left is a harsher stab, straight against the frantic pounding of his heart where it’s screaming out denial: _not yet, not yet, not yet_— 

The last thing he remembers is a burning that overtakes the numbness, the piercing sensation of a needle through the ventricles in his chest, and then words, hissed sharp but hazy through the din of the world giving way:

 _God damnit, Buck, what the hell_—

 _S’like adrenaline, you fucking punk. Get it straight in where it matters most_.

But that’s all Trip gets, before the blackness takes hold.

__________________________

“You’re sure this worked?”

“Look at him.” Where the first voice is low, heavy with concern, this one comes out flippant, almost. “Sure seems like it worked.”

“It was reckless,” the first voice chides.

“You’re one to fucking talk! Besides,” the second voice shifts, Trip can hear the movement, but he doesn’t want to open his eyes, not yet; everything hurts, everything hurts so _fucking_ bad—“He’s family as much as anyone, ain’t he?”

Trip’s breath catches without him understanding why. There’s a silence that settles, that follows, and he hears the steady beeping that lines up with the pulse in his neck before the first voice—lower still, now, but deep, and fond—breaks through.

“You’re a stubborn sonuvabitch, James Buchanan Barnes.”

And there are three things that Trip likes to think he might be able to make sense of, if the circumstances were different. One being that name, because that name’s in history books and the sad look his granddad used to have when he talked about the war. Two being the fact that Trip was never the believing type, and if there’s a James Buchanan Barnes, who’s dead, and an Antoine Triplett who is also probably dead, then something’s not right, here, no.

Third being the very distinct sound of lips meeting lips that happens where Trip can’t see—because, y’know, eyes closed—and Granddad had always hinted at what Bucky Barnes meant to his good Captain, but Steve Rogers ain’t dead, not anymore, but then that voice, the first voice, the one talking, it _does_ sound like _maybe_ —

“Learned from the best, didn’t I?” The first voice hums at that, and there’s the sound again, the kissing sound, and Trip groans, and the sound stops, and he makes himself crack open his eyes because that voice sounds like newsreels as much as it sounds like the Triskelion crumbling as much as it sound in love, and hot damn.

Trip’s vision clears, and he meets two pairs of wide blue eyes, and he’s obviously hallucinating. Great.

“Oh hell,” he groans; “it didn’t kill me. It made me goddamn _crazy_.”

The dark-haired one tilts his head, smirks, and that dark hair’s real long, but Trip recognizes the face from enough faded photos in dusty books, cracked frames in the attic where Granddad used to spend long days, winter days, when the snow was the worst, when the world was cold and the railroad crossing next to the farmhouse was loud, and it clanged, and it echoed in the bones: Trip recognizes him, from the black and whites, from the grey.

“You’re not crazy.” And that’s the blond, the one who is definitely Steve Rogers but _why_ in the _fresh hell_ is Steve Rogers in Trip’s afterlife?

“Now don’t go runnin’ your yap before you’ve got all the facts, Stevie, that shit’s genetic,” the Bucky Barnes character says; “And Gabe _was_ kinda crazy.”

And maybe Trip isn’t dead, maybe he is hallucinating—or maybe it’s a Hydra trick, or maybe those life decoy things, or maybe it’s like Koenig and there are a assload of Barnes-and-Rogers kept under wraps for when someone’s brain needs fucking with, or—

“Bucky—” Steve Rogers, fucking hell, _Steve Rogers_ warns, but it does nothing to dampen the playful gleam in Barnes’ eyes as he cuts him off, shoots back:

“ _Woman_ -crazy.” And it’s a shit-eating grin and a playful brow-wriggle that Rogers chuckles at, slaps his knee and clasps Bucky’s shoulder as his eyes get wide like Granddad’s used to, when he remembered, when the good overtook the bad, if only for a minute.

“Oh shit, with his French?” Rogers is saying it, enthusiastic and caught up and Trip remembers his grandfather singing in other languages sometimes, usually Christmas Carols, but he never asked how well he spoke them, if he spoke them.

Trip thinks he should have asked.

“Did you _see_ all the dames he was charming in London that time with whatever Dernier had taught him to say just right,” Rogers is going on, grinning, and Barnes is smiling, but the joy’s dampened somehow, and that brings Rogers’ eyes back to Trip, which sobers him.

“Okay, fine,” he concedes to Barnes with a glance, then back to Trip. “But no,” he shakes his head definitively. “Not crazy.”

Trip tries to clear his throat, but it’s dry, and tight; Barnes moves a straw to his lips and he takes the water greedily. 

“I,” he stumbles, voice froggier than he’d have liked if he was going to meet national icons in his maybe-dead-maybe-not headtrips, but whatever. He ain’t picky.

“But you’re,” and he glances at Barnes, who grins. “And _you_ ,” and then to Rogers, who might be blushing, and fuck, alien technology, what _if_ —

“Time travel?”

Barnes actually _does_ snort before cackling, full-bodied and raucous and heartily amused.

“Closer,” Rogers smiles a little tightly, talking over the laugher. “But still no.”

“Extraction.” Barnes calms himself enough to explain. “Did you people really think you were flying that far under the radar?”

“Just because SHIELD’s not what it once was, doesn’t mean we don’t have an obligation to fulfill,” Rogers’ face is stony, and Trip thinks he understands, now, how a science-experiment-turned-showboy ended up winning a goddamned war. “People to protect.”

“When Hydra made the bid for Puerto Rico, they weren’t exactly quiet about why,” Barnes is leaning in, looking at Trip meaningfully, willing him with those puppydog eyes to put the pieces together.

“So y’all swooped in from whatever it is you do,” he nods to Rogers, as if he doesn’t know that since the man got defrosted he’s been saving the world like it’s a golf outing, every fucking Sunday; “and wherever it is _you’ve_ been,” and that one’s gonna take a story, Trip’s pretty goddamned sure, because if those two are as close as his granddad used to say, and if the way they’re not even bothering to sneak the looks they’re giving each other, and if there were only two people in the goddamned room making those _kissing noises_ earlier, then Trip thinks there’s probably a story to explain why Bucky Barnes, love of Steve Rogers’ goddamned life, was MIA for the better part of a century, and still looked about thirty—younger, really, if you placed the emo-vibe rather than the wrinkles ‘round the eyes, but whatever.

Trip shakes his head, which hurts, and it’s the fact that it hurts a whole fucking _lot_ that reorients him, brings him back—focus.

Task at hand, Triplett.

“And so the two a’you just decided, hey, let’s crash an alien temple and save the idiot who got stuck through with Kree-ice like a dumbass?”

And Trip’s not sure what he’s expecting, and he shouldn’t really be surprised because he grew up on the stories—the _real_ stories, not the ones in the textbooks, but the ones where Bucky Barnes got his dick half-froze off one time because he’d put his underwear on wet in the Alps, and where Steve Rogers didn’t learn his lesson with _fondue_ and was successfully convinced that _calisson_ referred to a particularly lewd act that could only be performed if your tongue was longer than five inches: Trip’s not sure what he’s expecting, but he shouldn’t be surprised when Rogers shrugs, and looks at Barnes, who also shrugs, and says, plain and simple: 

“More or less, yeah.”

“What about the others? Trip asks, because he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Raina, really, but Skye, Coulson; Jemma. Fitz.

“The rest of them are fine,” Rogers tells him. “Or else, fine as they’re going to get.” And Trip doesn’t second guess, because there’s something definitive, something disgustingly honest about that face, that voice: when Captain America says a thing, it’s fact, as far as he knows it. 

“And we didn’t have a vested interest in the rest of ‘em.” Barnes tacks on flippantly, and Rogers nods, like it’s a given, but Trip’s not following, and he takes a minute to decide whether he wants to ask, wants to look slow on the uptake with two living (living, yeah, he’s sure of that, now, he thinks) legends, but if he’s got a vice in this world, or for that matter in the next: it’s curiosity.”

“Beg pardon?”

There’s a silence that encompasses a whole conversation between deathless soldierboys, and Trip gets the impression that the debate that occurs between eyes results in Barnes drawing the short straw.

“I had a hunch,” Barnes speaks first, a little hesitant; “about your little temple.”

“Bucky’s got some special insight into these sorts of things,” Rogers tacks on, and Barnes does his little snort, but this time it’s bitter, and when he raises his left hand, which Trip hadn’t had occasion to give much attention to, he catches the reflection of light, and sees precisely why.

 

“Me an’ Hydra’ve got some scores to settle, you might say,” Barnes bites out, and that metal fist clenches hard, and Trip thinks, Trip recognizes, Trip knows the stories, but—then he sees the hardness, the hatred, but more than that, the hurt: between both of these men. 

“More I can do to fuck them over?” Barnes shrugs, and Trip doesn’t miss the way Rogers puts a hand on the other man’s knee, reassurance of touch. “The better I’ll sleep at night.” 

And yeah, Trip thinks, when he starts to process what that means, what Hydra could possibly have done to take away years, to take away life, to take one half of a person away from its whole, if Granddad’s stories about these knuckleheads could be believed, and watching them now, the easy affection, the unconscious lean, yeah. They can be believed, and then some.

Fucking _Hydra_.

“Anyway,” Barnes clears his throat, straightens, and Trip picks up the way Rogers squeezes his hand against Barnes’ thigh before drawing back. “Long story short, the obelisk?”

“The glowy thing that decided to stab me when it broke?”

“Just the same,” Barnes nods. “Ain’t the only one, though. And your temple? I might’ve had a mission there before. Probably,” Barnes cocks his head, glances to Rogers; “mid-70s?”

“Thereabouts, from what you’ve said,” Rogers nods, but there’s a tightness around his mouth that makes it clear what it does to him, to think about his friend, his partner—more, probably, no; definitely more—and what the 70s might have done. What a century damn well _did_.

“Right.” Barnes is leaning in, carrying on like Rogers don’t look like he’s sucking on a lemon, like the vein in his temple’s not gonna burst out of righteous fury and the need to protect from the past, of all things; of all the worst things there is. 

“See, there’s a difference,” he says, almost conspiratorily, “between being born for transformation, and made to be spared the purge.”

Trip blinks, and really does try to pick up the implication. He really, really tries.

“I don’t think I follow.”

No fucking dice. He’s gonna blame the obeli-spike thing. Yep.

 

“Your friend, Daisy,” Barnes says, and Trip blinks.

“Skye,” Rogers butts in, and yeah, okay, Skye’s Daisy, that’s weird—is it weird that that’s maybe the weirdest part of this so far? Skye doesn’t strike him as a Daisy, that’s a strange name for her, doesn’t really fit—

Right. Focus. Goddamnit, he’s bad at this shit when he’s hyped up on painkillers in a hospital bed.

“She was born to be changed by whatever the hell that thing does,” Barnes takes back the reins, keeps going. “Me, though,” his grin turns wolfish; “I ain’t nothing special.”

“Wrong.” Rogers; which earns a fond roll of the eyes and a shoulder-bump from Barnes in return.

“Not _that_ kinda special, then, you fuckin’ sap,” Barnes groans, but it’s with a grin that shines real bright. “But I can touch that thing, no problem. And I can walk inside the lines that can’t be crossed.”

“Bruce cracked it a couple weeks ago,” Rogers explains, “when the whispers on the sub-frequencies started pointing that way. The serum, _our_ serum,” he gestures between himself and Barnes, and okay, right: that makes sense of the whole ageless supersoldier vibe he gets on both fronts, sure. “It mimics the same biological markers, somehow, there are genetic resonances.”

“It fools the tech,” Barnes nods. “It doesn’t want to change us, we’re not worthy for that. But it _does_ make it believe that we’re okay to be spared the rock-turning shit.” Barnes shrugs. “Which is the important part.”

“And our serum’s got some real interesting similarities to the GH formula that Coulson’s so fond of,” Rogers tacks on, with a bone to pick evident in the tone, yeah, but there’s something heavier in the way he’s eying Trip that seems significant.

“So—” Barnes draws out slowly, shooting Trip a pointed look, and it takes a second; it takes a hot damn second for Trip to review the facts and order them accordingly through the mindfuck that’s currently swimming ‘round his head, but he gets there. He usually gets there, in the end.

Unfortunately.

“Oh _hell_ ,” he hisses, damn well feels his eyes bug the fuck out of his skull. “Don’t you tell me you gave me the alien goop!”

“Cool your jets,” Barnes drawls out, seemingly unperturbed that they’ve shot a man up with blue-man crazy-juice. “Ain’t gonna do shit now, ‘cept keep you alive and kickin’. Only caused problems because it wanted the Temple found, but that’s old news. And if there’re any hiccups,” he turns to Rogers, who shoots Trip an encouraging sort of smile.

“Turns out the Kree have been making some noise these days, and not the good kind,” Rogers tells him, that famous gleam of pending justice in his eyes. “Thor’s got some interesting insight from his brother on that front, and if we need a hand with anything funny, he’s got places he can go. People he can ask.”

“Basically,” Barnes leans back in his chair, crosses his legs at the ankles and his arms behind his neck: “you’re a prime example of the marvel of modern medicine, and a little modern machinery to bridge the gaps.”

“Machinery?”

That bit runs cold in Trip’s blood. He’s seen what machinery does inside a man. He doesn’t much like it any better than having outer space insanity-smoothie pumping through his veins.

“Well,” Rogers bites his lip, searches for words in a way that doesn’t exactly impart confidence, and Barnes takes pity on him. 

“We got to you after you were already starting to go geode on us,” Barnes informs him, none-too-gently. “I got the serum into your heart before it was compromised, which was lucky as all hell, and it preserved what wasn’t already changed. You had a bit of an issue in your small intestine and your left lung, but we were able to supplement your system with tech—”

“Oh _hell_ no,” Trip damn-near fucking yelps, he ain’t ashamed to say it. “Do _not_ tell me that I’ve got Cybertek mods in my body right now.”

“Cybertek?” Barnes looks at him, and goddamn if the man don’t look more horrified than even Trip himself feels, just now, images of John Garrett dancing in his head. “Fuck no, do you think we _hate_ you? Those morons are the reason my arm hadn’t seen an actual upgrade in the better part of a decade,” Barnes flexes his left arm, and looks personally offended for a second before he nods to Trip’s midsection, which is more heavily bandaged than he’d given a thought to, before now.

“Starktech’s what you’ve got in there, my friend,” Barnes smirks, “which, as you might know, has a much better track-record of keeping people alive.”

Trip breathes in deep, takes it in: tech. Starktech. Mr. Arc-Reactor himself designed the shit that’s keeping Trip alive.

He waits out the way his heart’s still pounding with his eyes closed, and the men next to him allow it in silence, don’t comment on the heady beep of the monitor where it echoes, where it gives him away until it’s steady again, and there’s nothing left to comment on.

Trip likes these guys.

“There’s also the arm.”

His eyes snap open, and find Barnes looking stoic, and Rogers look apprehensive, apologetic, and Trip glances at the wrapped arm he’s having trouble making sensation out in, underneath gauze and wrapped tight, unseen: too fucking tight. Too hidden from view to be anything good.

Hold that fucking thought; the one about liking these guys.

“It’s mostly rock,” Rogers says gently, and that, Trip probably could have guessed. “But Bruce is still taking a look at what the serum might be able to regenerate.” Rogers glances at Barnes, at his arm, and looks sad, but then hopeful—expressive face, this man, goddamn; how he became a soldier in the first place is beyond Trip, it really is, heart on his sleeve like that. Musta got broken really quick, and real often.

Trip’s eyes slide to Barnes, and he thinks: oh. Right.

Must have.

“It can’t regrow what’s gone,” Rogers tells him, “but your cells were repurposed, more than flat out destroyed. So there might be something.”

“Worst-case, though,” Barnes looks almost sympathetic as he cuts in, “you get one of these,” and he rolls his sleeve up a bit, to the elbow, all shining alloy and almost-gorgeous plates that shift, that shudder with every subtle motion. “And much as I hate to admit it? Tony’s made a hell of a limb, man. Stronger than Steve’s by, like, a lot, and I mean, shit,” Barnes’ eyes are twinkling as he glances over at Rogers; “just you _look_ at those guns.”

Rogers scoffs, but he can’t hide his blush; Barnes laughs, but he can’t hide his love—Trip swallows, and thinks, and bites his lip until it hurts too hard, tastes too much of iron to be anything but real.

Fucking _fuck_.

“So,” Trip starts, treading lightly. “Y’all saved my ass.”

Barnes shrugs. “More or less.”

“Not without help,” Rogers adds, all earnestness and valor and spangly-whatnot. 

Trip nods, real slow. “I’m alive.”

“You are,” Rogers confirms, and his smile’s kinda warm, kinda nice.

“And you’re staying that way, you got me?” Barnes fucking growls, shakes a fucking finger at him like he’s twelve, and Trip can’t help it, can’t even regret the way it burns down his torso: he goddamn _laughs_.

He cringes, after, but he _does_ laugh, and he lets that carry him toward the last sobering point he needs to have cleared up before he can make heads or tails of any of this shit.

“Not that I’m not grateful, ‘cause I am, fuck me, I _really_ am,” Trip prefaces; he needs to make that real clear. “But what I still can’t figure is why Captain America himself,” he nods to Rogers, who looks a little uncomfortable, “and _the_ Bucky Barnes,” and if Rogers looks a little uncomfortable, Barnes goes the whole damned hog; “decided to pull these kinda strings for little old me?”

The men are silent, and Trip lets them be, because maybe they don’t know; maybe Trip’s just the lucky beneficiary of the No-Century-For-Old-Supersoldiers charitable rescue fund or something. He’s not complaining.

He just, y’know. Wants to know.

It’s Rogers who speaks first.

“We don’t got much in the here and now, y’know,” he says, and his voice is rough, and he’s not looking anywhere except at the ground. “Everyone we knew. They’re gone.”

Barnes nods, grates out: “World’s different.”

And yeah, Trip gets that. Not the same, not even close, but when Nan and Granddad died, that was the last of his circle, his _people_ —they’d damn well raised him, and SHIELD was a great gig, Hydra-bullshit notwithstanding, and his team now’s a unit of sorts, more or less, and he cares for ‘em, of course he does. But he’s not stupid enough to think that can last, to think that can hold when death’s on their heels every five second; when there are spiky obelisk thingies that want to stab him to death, that land him here, laid-up and fuzzy-brained and aching where his body’s turned to _fucking rock_.

So Trip knows how he’s been feeling it, without; he can only imagine what that means for people like Barnes and Rogers, for people who didn’t even get the luxury of time, of memories, of at least a couple goodbyes.

“But you’re Gabe’s,” Rogers breaks through Trip’s thoughts, and Trip’s eyes move to meet the wide-stretched blue: eager and heartfelt and truthful to the bone. “And Gabe was ours,” he chews his lip, stumbles a bit before wrapping up awkwardly: “So.”

Trip feels something in his chest at the words beneath the words, there; at the look in Captain America’s eyes when he says what he says, and means what he says and a whole lot more that he doesn’t say; there’s a funny kind of sensation in Trip’s chest when he cycles through those words: _You’re Gabe’s, and Gabe was ours, so._

 _So_.

“What he means,” Barnes cuts through the quiet that’s settled, awkward in his own way but seemingly used to charging into the things Rogers starts but can’t quite finish: “is that I can still glaze one hell of a Christmas ham,” and the smile Barnes gives him is a new one, is a soft one, is a little bit shy and Trip can’t help himself for wanting to return it, for wanting to smile right back. 

“And we can set an extra place at the table,” Barnes glances up at him, rueful and roguish and giving: an invitation to a thing that makes no sense, except that funny feeling in Trip’s chest that’s undeniable. That feels like a spot made for him to fit. “If you don’t have plans for the 25th.”

“Right,” Trip says, low and small and grateful for more than his life or some ham. “I,” he licks his lips, swallows again around that funny little feeling, and Rogers is smiling, now—encouraging; and Barnes is smiling still, all open arms, somehow, and a kind of welcome that Trip’s missed—god _damn_ , but he’s _missed_ it. 

“Right, okay,” Trip breathes out; “Okay.”

He’s got nowhere to be on the 25th. And it might just be nice. 

To find a family again.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com), as you do.


End file.
